posted at 6:01 pm on December 24, 2012 by Allahpundit

The message came at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, where a standing room crowd attended Mass on Sunday morning. The priest told those gathered to be like the character Natalie Wood played in the film “Miracle on 34th Street,” who said, “It’s silly, but I believe.”

He said in the wake of the tragedy it is important to believe in Christmas and that God, like Santa Claus in the movie, will ultimately provide what he has promised — a life without death.

***

Last year, a blizzard derailed the annual Halloween festivities that bring hundreds of trick-or-treaters onto Main Street. This year, Superstorm Sandy also ruined Halloween. And then came the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre Dec. 14, when a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six employees. The tragedy seemed sure to steal Christmas from a town that for generations has embraced it with caroling, tree-lighting ceremonies, pageants and a pancake breakfast…

Everyone agreed that it wouldn’t be easy, not this year and not for many years to come, and reminders of the tragedy are everywhere. As people ate their free pie outside Town Hall, another funeral procession passed, bringing the happy moment to a temporary halt. A huge Christmas tree in the heart of Sandy Hook is covered with decorations, but many carry the names of victims. Small children gaze in wonder at the toys, cards and candles heaped beneath the tree, too young to realize they are gazing at a memorial, as the adults holding their hands fight back tears…

But on the Friday night before Christmas, hours after the town observed a moment of silence and the church bells rang 26 times to remember the victims, the smell of popcorn filled the Town Hall lobby, and children settled into the theater’s seats to watch a movie.

Shannon Doherty, who owns the Wishing Well Gift Shop blocks away from Sandy Hook school, said he usually sells a lot of ornaments this time of year, but now people are buying teddy bears for the shrine. After every sale, “I have to pick my wife up off the floor from crying,” Doherty said.

His children attended Sandy Hook elementary. His 12-year-old son Eamon’s best friend lost a brother, Jack Pinto, in the shooting. His landlord’s wife was a teacher there who survived. He and his wife have cried so much, that Dec. 14 “feels like a century ago,” he said.

He thought traffic to the shrine would slow down by the weekend, but instead it’s picked up with visitors from across Connecticut and nearby states.

“We can’t lose Christmas too,” said Lisa Terifay, who has two children at Sandy Hook Elementary who survived. Her son is in first grade. “The class he sat next to at lunch,” she said through tears, “they’re all gone.”…

Others saw an immeasurable gift to the surviving schoolchildren and their families in the painstaking recreation of the Sandy Hook school at a previously mothballed school in the neighboring town of Monroe.

Hundreds of people were involved in the replication effort. Photographs of the old classrooms were used to determine wall paint colors, placement of bookshelves and cubby holes, and the configuration of desks for reassembly as exactly as possible to how they were before. If a box of crayons was left on a desk, it should be there when the students enter the new classrooms after the holiday break, Monroe First Selectman Stephen Vavrek said.

The holidays have been rough for the Newtown Police Department, which is why officers from across Connecticut joining forces, so that not a single Newtown officer has to work on Christmas Day. The plan has been kept on the down low for the past few days, since the various police departments are making the effort not for the press but as a gesture of solidarity with their fellow officers. After whispers of the touching gesture from local law enforcement emerged on Twitter over the weekend, however, the Newtown Police Department confirmed the news in an interview with The Atlantic Wire on Monday. “They’ve been actually non-stop with their aid. It’s pretty amazing,” said Newtown police spokesperson Sergeant Steve Santucci said of his fellow Connecticut officers. “And tomorrow, they’ll be at our assistance so that Newtown [officers] can be home with their families.”

But wait there’s more. One of the only perks about working on Christmas Day is overtime and holiday pay. Just as they’re not doing it for the press, though, many of the officers filling in at Newtown aren’t interested in the money, so they’re reportedly donating their paychecks to Newtown and Sandy Hill Elementary School charities.

***

Dennis Stratford, who works for the school district, happened to be making a delivery to Sandy Hook Elementary when the gunman attacked. He saw dead children. He saw the remains of dead children on those who survived. He waited agonizing minutes for his own child to emerge unharmed from the school. Two of his neighbors’ children did not.

“I go home and cry every night, and I cry every morning,” Stratford said.

He went to one counseling session, but the horrific images remain. What helps more is work: sorting through the warehouses full of gifts, delivering them where they need to go or doing whatever else needs to be done for his town.

Millions of dollars have poured into Newton in the aftermath of the tragedy. The United Way of Western Connecticut said the official fund for donations had $2.8 million in it on Saturday. Others sent envelopes stuffed with cash to pay for coffee at the general store, and a shipment of cupcakes arrived from a gourmet bakery in Beverly Hills, California.

The Postal Service reported a six-fold increase in mail in the town and set up a unique post office box to handle it. Some letters were addressed to the “First Responders” or just “The People of Newtown.” One card arrived from Georgia addressed to “The families of 6 amazing women and 20 beloved angels.” Many contained checks.

“This is just the proof of the love that’s in this country,” Postmaster Cathy Zieff said…

The basement of the town hall building resembled a toy store, with piles of stuffed animals, dolls, games, and other gifts. They all were inspected and examined by bomb-sniffing dogs. The children could choose whatever they wanted.

***

The town has been so inundated with donations for children that Pierce said she has redistributed some to other children dropping off their own notes and donations, saying that with their acts of kindness they too have qualified to be children of Newtown.

On Monday, she gave each of the children dropping off cards a golden stuffed monkey. She chose gold, she said, because it symbolizes a new dawn that everyone needs.

“At the same time we have this outpouring and we want to make sure we give respect for every phone call, every card, every gift, every flower, every kind word,” she said. “And so that’s one of the things that everyone in the community is trying to do is make sure while people are honoring us, that’s the big question, how do you say to the world ‘Thank you?’”

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Parishioners at a church that lost eight children and two adults in the shootings in Newtown are being told to embrace the Christmas holiday.
========

Speaking of Shootings………………

Gunman opens fire on fire crews in Webster, New York

2 firefighters have died after being shot at the scene of a fire on Lake Road in Webster, New York, early Monday.

Webster Police confirm that another two firefighters were also shot. They are being treated at Strong Memorial Hospital and are both listed in guarded condition. The suspect was found dead at the scene. – 13WHAM
===================

Suspect was a convicted felon (murderer), so could not have acquired his gun(s) legally.

Spengler was a convicted felon who spent time in prison for killing his grandmother in 1981. He was released in 1998 and on parole until 2006. Monday he was found dead on a nearby beach with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

For family that lost home to Sandy, ‘a miracle’
By HELEN O’NEILL
— Dec. 24 12:29 AM EST
**********************

LONG BEACH, N.Y. (AP) — The text from Sister Diane at St. Ignatius Martyr church was as odd as it was urgent: “A man is going to call. You must answer the phone.”

Kerry Ann Troy had just finished her daily “cry time” — that half-hour between dropping the kids off at school and driving back to her gutted house on New York’s Long Island, or to the hurricane relief center, or to wherever she was headed in those desperate days after Sandy, when life seemed an endless blur of hopelessness and worry.

Cellphone reception was sporadic, so even if the stranger called, she would likely miss him. Besides, she had so many other things on her mind.

After spending the first week with relatives in Connecticut, Troy, a part-time events planner for the city, and her husband, Chris, a firefighter, had managed to find a hotel room for a week in Garden City. The couple had no idea where they and their three children — Ryan, 13, Connor, 12, and Katie, 4 — would go next. Hotels were full. Rentals were gone. Their modest raised ranch, a few blocks from the beach, was unlivable.

But the Troys faced another dilemma.

The family had been looking forward to a weeklong, post-Thanksgiving trip to Disney World, paid for by the Make-A-Wish-Foundation to benefit Connor, who suffers from a life-threatening, neuromuscular disease. He had lost one wheelchair to the storm. His oxygen equipment and other medical supplies were damaged by water. He was disoriented and confused.

How could they tell their sick child that the storm that had disrupted his life might also cost him his dream — to meet Kermit the Frog?

Yet Chris Troy felt he couldn’t leave. And Kerry Ann said she wouldn’t go without him.

And then — in the space of a few hours — everything changed.

A school administrator pulled Kerry Ann aside when she went to pick up Katie. She told her of a vacant summer home — a spacious, fully furnished, three-bedroom house in nearby Point Lookout, which the owners wished to donate to a displaced family. The Troys could live there indefinitely, at no cost, while they sorted out their lives.

Kerry Ann could hardly believe their good fortune. The kids could stay in their schools. The family could go to Florida after all.

But that was only the beginning.

The stranger that Sister Diane had texted her about earlier had left a message.

His name was Donald. He wanted to meet the Troys. He wanted to help.

___

At St. Ignatius Martyr, offers of help began pouring in as soon as the storm waters receded: spaghetti dinner fundraisers, fat checks from churches in North Carolina and Texas, smaller donations from nearby parishes.

For weeks the church had no power, heat or working phones. Masses were held in the school gym. Monsignor Donald Beckmann, scrambling to help his displaced parishioners, was a hard man to track down.

But Donald Denihan, a 51-year-old businessman from Massapequa, managed to find him. He wanted to see the devastation firsthand. And he wanted to help one family rebuild. He would pay for everything, from demolition costs to new paint. He just wanted to make sure he found the right family, perhaps someone elderly, perhaps someone with a disability.

Over the phone he asked Beckmann: “Will you help me choose?”

The priest’s heart sank. There were thousands of families in need, people who had lost everything. How in the world could he pick just one?

A few days later Beckmann and Sister Diane Morgan gave Denihan a tour of their battered barrier island town off the South Shore of Long Island. They took him to the West End, a warren of narrow streets named after the states — Arizona, Ohio, Michigan — and crammed with small homes, many of them passed down from generation to generation. The neighborhood is staunchly working class; police officers and firefighters and teachers live here, many of them of Irish and Italian descent.

Now it was a disaster zone. Nearly every home had been flooded, their interiors — kitchen stoves and sheet rock, children’s toys and mattresses — spilling out of Dumpsters that lined the streets.

Father Beckmann drove Denihan to a small raised ranch at 103 Minnesota Avenue with a wheelchair ramp at the side. He told him about the family who lived there, the Troys, how they had evacuated to Connecticut mainly because of their sick son, how Kerry Ann’s childhood home around the corner, newly rebuilt after burning to the ground six years earlier, had been lost to the flood.

Then he took Denihan to another ruined house, the tiny bungalow where the church’s 74-year-old cook had climbed a 7-foot ladder into the attic to escape the rising water. All she could do was pray as she watched her disabled son nearly drown in his wheelchair below.

Both families were in urgent need of help, Beckmann said. Which one would Denihan choose?

Denihan listened intently.

After surviving three near-death experiences — a duck-shooting accident at 16, prostate cancer at 36, and a serious boating accident in 2011 — he had concluded there was a reason God wanted him around.

And so Denihan, who had made his money in hotel and real estate investments, had set up a fund. He called it God is Good. Until now, he wasn’t sure how he would use it.

“I can’t choose, Father,” Denihan confessed, as they drove back to the church. “I’ll just have to take care of both.”

The priest offered up a silent prayer of thanks.

The nun grabbed her cellphone and texted Kerry Ann.

___

Nothing had prepared Chris Troy for the sight of his home when he returned two days after the storm. The basement — including his beautifully finished wooden bar, Kerry Ann’s office space, the kids’ playroom, the laundry and boiler room — were dank and foul-smelling and mold was already growing. The water had reached to the ceiling, seeping into the living room, kitchen and bedrooms upstairs.

Troy prides himself on his stoicism, on being able to cope with anything. But a few hours passed before he could bring himself to break the news to his family.

“The house is a mess, and Daddy will fix it,” he told Katie, who burst into tears when she heard her toys were gone. “And the toys you lost you will get back at Christmas.”

In reality, he didn’t know how the family was going to cope or where they would spend Christmas. Insurance wouldn’t cover the basement area. He couldn’t afford to pay for repairs himself. And though friends and volunteers offered to help, most could spare only a few hours because they were so busy dealing with damage to their own homes.

“We were in a tough situation,” Chris said.

So they gladly agreed to meet with Denihan. Perhaps he would offer to pay for the sheet rock, or a generator, Chris thought. That would be nice.

Denihan showed up with a contractor. He walked through the house. He talked to the children. He seemed kind and matter-of-fact and purposeful.

Standing on their front porch, in the chilly morning sun, Denihan made a promise. He would rebuild their home. They could make any alterations they wanted, like installing a wheelchair-accessible shower and central air, something the Troys had dreamed of, because Connor’s disease causes him to overheat.

It was a few days before Thanksgiving and the Troys, distracted by the move to the borrowed house and their upcoming trip to Florida, didn’t fully comprehend. What exactly did he mean by “everything?”

It wasn’t until a moving van trundled up the next morning and workers carted off their remaining belongings and started tearing down walls, and Denihan told Kerry Ann to start picking out paint colors and tile, that the enormity of it began to sink in.

“This stranger walks into our lives and offers not just to rebuild our home, but to build us a better home,” said Kerry Ann. “And another family lends us their home. It’s absolutely a miracle.”

___

The trip to Disney World was the best of their lives. Connor had never been happier, bright and alert and grinning from ear to ear as he met the Magic Kingdom characters — Mickey and Woody and the Minions and, of course, Kermit. He went on carousel rides specially rigged for wheelchairs, splashed in the pool in his water chair and ate ice cream all day long.

Back home, they marvel at their new accommodations: The house is bigger than their own, with sweeping views of the Atlantic and a backyard with a swing-set that Katie calls her private park.

Still, they wrestle with how to come to grips with their new reality. And how to give thanks.

The Troys are used to struggle, to battling through on their own. Kerry Ann’s father died when she was a 19, after seven years in a coma, and she helped raise her younger siblings. They nearly lost Connor a few years ago, after spinal surgery left him in a body-cast for eight weeks and doctors didn’t think he would survive. Kerry Ann’s mother, Kathy, spent a year living with them in the basement, while her burned home was rebuilt.

So they find themselves agonizing over Denihan’s generosity, sure of their gratitude but unsure how to process it.

“How do you thank someone for giving you back your home and your life,” Chris asks. “What do I do … give him a child?”

Denihan isn’t looking for thanks — and he has his own children. He said he just feels blessed to be in a position to help, and grateful that others are pitching in, too. His contractors — plumber, electrician and builder — have offered to do the work either for free, or at cost. Perhaps, he says, others will hear the story and step up to help more Sandy victims in the same way.

Denihan hopes the family can move back home for Christmas — a goal the Troys initially thought was wildly optimistic, until they saw how rapidly everything was progressing. Already, new walls have gone up, the accessible shower has been installed, they have light and water and heat.

Most of all, two months after Sandy destroyed their home and disrupted their lives, they have hope. And plans.

They will have Christmas and a tree and Santa will bring the kids gifts. They will throw a party at their sparkling new house on Minnesota Avenue.

And they will celebrate a special Mass at St. Ignatius Martyr to give thanks for surviving the storm — and for the miracle that happened after, when strangers walked into their lives and gave them back their home.
====================

Lets hope that when it does settle down and it is time they have to clean up the shrines, it does not end it the trash due to damage from the elements. The volume makes hours of work that after day 3 of sorting it they give up and send the rest into the trash. Save the stuffed animals and toys and give to the children ward hospital end if they where left at a shrine.

Whenever this happens I am reminded of the Indonesian Tsunami. People wanted to do what ever they could. So a bakery in (Switzerland or Sweden) baked bread for a whole day and paid to fly 12 pallets of bread to the area. If it was not allowed past customs in time it might as well be given to the birds. When shines get too big and toy drives for tragedy get too big most end in the trash as it is days worth of time to sort it and not even good will can handle it.

I’m posting this now because I might not get another chance later this evening as I finish up some last-minute tasks, then head to the choir loft for Midnight Mass. And tomorrow … it will be a beautifully-controlled but delicious chaos of a Christmas dinner with the family and I doubt I’ll be near my laptop. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Christmas tunes.

All my best wishes to everyone here at Hot Air for a blessed, joyous Christmas!

I don’t know if I have a beautiful voice, not really. I’m not professionally trained, but I have sung in choirs since I was in elementary school and I love it. I also come from a long line of amateur musicians and music freaks. :)

One thing I didn’t anticipate this year was the arrival of a raging head cold with an accompanying sore throat. One of my coworkers asked me if I was doing a Sarah Vaughan imitation. LOL! Later, I talked to my choir director and she said most of the alto section (of which I’m one) and several sopranos also developed colds of their own, so it’s going to be very interesting. The choir loft will no doubt be wafting great clouds of Hall’s cough drop fumes into the church, competing with our pastor and his incense. :)

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Scripture is a love story, the story of God’s love for humanity. But it’s a real story filled with real people. It’s not a fairytale. In Scripture, as in the real world, evil things happen to innocent persons. The wicked seem to thrive. Cruelty and suffering are common.

The Psalmist cries out to heaven again and again for justice; Job is crushed by misfortune; Herod murders blameless infants; Jesus is nailed to a cross. God is good, but we human beings are free, and being free, we help fashion the nature of our world with the choices we make. This is why evil is frightening, but it’s not incomprehensible. We know it from intimate experience. What we never quite expect is for our private sins, multiplied and fermented by millions of lives with the same or similar “little” sins, to somehow feed the kind of evil that walks into a Connecticut school and guns down 26 innocent lives, 20 of them children.

Thirteen years ago, as archbishop of Denver, I helped bury some of the victims of the Columbine High School massacre. Nothing is more helpless or heart-breaking than to sit with parents who kissed their children goodbye in the morning and will never see them alive again in this world. The pain of loss is excruciating. Words of comfort all sound empty. The victims in the Sandy Hook massacre were even younger and more numerous than those at Columbine, and if such intense sorrow could be measured, the suffering of the Connecticut family members left behind might easily be worse. With such young lives cut so short, every parental memory of an absent child will be precious — compounded by a hunger for more time and more memories that will never happen. This is why we need to keep the grieving families so urgently in our hearts and prayers.

People will ask, “How could a loving God allow such wickedness?” Every life lost in Connecticut was unique, precious and irreplaceable. But the evil was routine; every human generation is rich with it. Why does God allow war? Why does God allow hunger? Why does God allow the kind of poverty that strips away the dignity of millions of people in countries around the world?

All of these questions sound reasonable, and yet they’re all evasions. We might as well ask, “Why does God allow us to be free?” We have the gift of being loved by a Creator who seeks our love in return; and being loved, we will never be coerced by the One who loves us. God gives us the dignity of freedom – freedom to choose between right and wrong, a path of life or a path of death. We are not the inevitable products of history or economics or any other determinist equation. We’re free, and therefore we’re responsible for both the beauty and the suffering we help make. Why does God allow wickedness? He allows it because we – or others just like us – choose it. The only effective antidote to the wickedness around us is to live differently from this moment forward. We make the future beginning now.

In this new year, the Church urges us to lift up our hearts and to rejoice. There’s nothing remotely naïve in this call to joy; the Church knows the harshness of the world far too well for empty pieties. The evil in the world is bitter and brutal, but it’s not new. Nor, in the light of human history, is it a surprise. Yet in the Old Testament, the Song of Songs tells us that “love is strong as death,” and in God’s redeeming plan, love is stronger than death. The surprise is the persistence of God’s fidelity and mercy. The surprise is that, despite our sins, we still long to be the people God intended us to be. Christmas is the birthday of Jesus Christ, our Emmanuel, a name that means “God with us.” The surprise is that God sends his own Son into a dark world to bring us light and hope. So it has been with every generation since Bethlehem. So it remains — even now.

Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia.

Merry Christmas to all. May God’s blessings be with you in the new year.

I just sorta’ got a feeling about it when you took the little guy to see Santa Claus.

Please explain, collie.

My collie says:

It was then that I realized that there are now twenty small children sitting in the lap of Jesus — and many of them are not the least bit shy about asking for favors for their friends and family members.

I have long sought rejuvenation from The People’s Cube. But since the November election, I have been going there almost daily, in an eternal struggle to empower myself to drink more deeply in the glory days of Stalin.

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
Isaiah 7:14 (KJV)

The roots of the music of Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel! go back to the 15th century. The Messianic titles in the lyrics, called the O Antiphons, are from the Old Testament, and their use in liturgy goes back to the 8th century.2

The first letters of the titles taken backwards form a Latin acrostic of “Ero Cras” which translates to “Tomorrow, I will come”, mirroring the theme of the antiphons.

“Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming” is an English Christmas carol based on a beautiful 15th century German song. The opening lyrics refer to God’s promise to David, the son of Jesse, that Messiah would come from his lineage, and that of His kingdom there would be no end.

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;

And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:

But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.
Isaiah 11:1–5 KJV